12/6/2014
SANTA ANA – As Santa Ana police detectives doggedly searched Friday for more children who may have been molested by a neighbor, several mothers who live in the same apartment complex worried about the abuse charges against 22-year-old Edwin Echeverria.
“I’ve always felt safe here,” Maria Rosales, who resides in the Warwick Square Apartments, said at school bus stop at the corner of South Lyon Street and Mark and Brian Expressway cul-de-sac near an elementary school. “But I wait here every day so I get my kids when they return from school, so they don’t go off with bad people somewhere.”
The bus stop is typically a busy gathering place for moms who share small talk and their favorite recipes as they wait for their children to arrive from school.
But Friday the discussions were more ominous and questions lingered. Had a child molester been living in their neighborhood undetected?
“You get scared mostly because you think that you can’t always protect them,” said Rosales, who has a second-grade son and sixth-grade daughter. “They are not by your side 24 hours and can’t control who they come into contact with.”
A man who identified himself only as Mauricio, waiting at the bus stop for his grandchildren, said he knew little about the allegations against Echeverria.
Echeverria made his first court appearance Friday in Orange County Superior Court to face 14 felony counts of lewd acts upon a child under 14.
Three of the counts involve incidents with multiple victims, according to the criminal complaint, and three involve victims who were at least 10 years younger than Echeverria.
Prosecutors say Echeverria befriended more than 10 boys near his gated Warwick Square apartment in the 700 block of South Lyon Street before “committing sex acts against some of them,” according to an Orange County District Attorney's office statement.
No one answered the door Friday at Echeverria’s apartment, which faces a large playground.
Evelyn Mani, 21, who lives a few doors down from Echeverria, said the charges against him are hard to believe. “He is a nice person and friendly as a neighbor,” she said. “He talked to kids.”
The accusations came to the attention of authorities after a parent of one of the boys alerted the Santa Ana Police Department. Echeverria was arrested Wednesday.
“Detectives are not aware of any other Santa Ana cases involving a single suspect targeting such a large number of victims within recent memory,” Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said.
Police say they have identified nine sex assault victims whose ages range from 10 to 14 and three who are victims of lesser offenses. They also suspect there are at least four others, Bertagna said.
Investigators think Echeverria began abusing the boys in summer 2012 at his apartment. The complaint filed Friday morning indicates that the abuse against some of the boys lasted until Dec. 1.
Echeverria appeared in a courtroom at the Central Jail Complex in Santa Ana on Friday morning, but he did not enter a plea. His bail was set at $1 million, and he was ordered to return to court Dec. 19 for an arraignment.
If convicted, Echeverria faces up to 275 years to life in state prison.
source
| Edwin Echeverria |
“I’ve always felt safe here,” Maria Rosales, who resides in the Warwick Square Apartments, said at school bus stop at the corner of South Lyon Street and Mark and Brian Expressway cul-de-sac near an elementary school. “But I wait here every day so I get my kids when they return from school, so they don’t go off with bad people somewhere.”
The bus stop is typically a busy gathering place for moms who share small talk and their favorite recipes as they wait for their children to arrive from school.
But Friday the discussions were more ominous and questions lingered. Had a child molester been living in their neighborhood undetected?
“You get scared mostly because you think that you can’t always protect them,” said Rosales, who has a second-grade son and sixth-grade daughter. “They are not by your side 24 hours and can’t control who they come into contact with.”
A man who identified himself only as Mauricio, waiting at the bus stop for his grandchildren, said he knew little about the allegations against Echeverria.
Echeverria made his first court appearance Friday in Orange County Superior Court to face 14 felony counts of lewd acts upon a child under 14.
Three of the counts involve incidents with multiple victims, according to the criminal complaint, and three involve victims who were at least 10 years younger than Echeverria.
Prosecutors say Echeverria befriended more than 10 boys near his gated Warwick Square apartment in the 700 block of South Lyon Street before “committing sex acts against some of them,” according to an Orange County District Attorney's office statement.
No one answered the door Friday at Echeverria’s apartment, which faces a large playground.
Evelyn Mani, 21, who lives a few doors down from Echeverria, said the charges against him are hard to believe. “He is a nice person and friendly as a neighbor,” she said. “He talked to kids.”
The accusations came to the attention of authorities after a parent of one of the boys alerted the Santa Ana Police Department. Echeverria was arrested Wednesday.
“Detectives are not aware of any other Santa Ana cases involving a single suspect targeting such a large number of victims within recent memory,” Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said.
Police say they have identified nine sex assault victims whose ages range from 10 to 14 and three who are victims of lesser offenses. They also suspect there are at least four others, Bertagna said.
Investigators think Echeverria began abusing the boys in summer 2012 at his apartment. The complaint filed Friday morning indicates that the abuse against some of the boys lasted until Dec. 1.
Echeverria appeared in a courtroom at the Central Jail Complex in Santa Ana on Friday morning, but he did not enter a plea. His bail was set at $1 million, and he was ordered to return to court Dec. 19 for an arraignment.
If convicted, Echeverria faces up to 275 years to life in state prison.
source
No comments:
Post a Comment